"The room can totally wreck, or make, a system"

@mashif Understood and agree.

This is why it is so difficult to get new entrants into this hobby; we keep making it more complicated (and expensive) for newbies to put together a system (including room) that is acceptable to 'us" and not subject to outright ridicule and scorn.

I have no idea what this means. We are having a discussion. If some of it goes above a new entrants' head, well that's not our responsibility. This is not a textbook or a "how to" blog. If some new person needs an explanation, they can ask for it. They're not children.

I could've saved a lot of money through the years on equipment if I would've spent time/money on room treatment in the beginning.

The environment is always the first thing to fix, better yet design, correctly and then use room treatments.

Then it comes to placement of all the gear and furnishings, speaker placement most critical.

If the above are truly optimized then there should  be little or no need to equalize

If one must then always best to reduce levels next to dips, not add to the dips.

Next up is equipment, last on the list.

I have set up outstanding high end systems in a properly setup environment then dialed it all in, swapped to a system costing 10% and it was still dang fine and better than most super high end systems I have ever heard.

Rick

I am a 2-channel person first and foremost but getting the RAAL VM-1a tube amp and the RAAL SR1a earphones gave me 2-channel minus the room. It is an incredible listen and each night when I turn my 2-channel systems off and put the earphones on for late night work, I do not feel I degraded the listening experience. With all other phones it was not as good because of my 2-channel bias.

I have purchased the VM-1a amp and Sr1a 2x now. I sold it thinking I would do something else, and it was a big mistake.

Today, the SR1a can be run on low powered 2-channel amps unlike the past where you needed 100+ watts. I also use my used $400 20-watt Schitt Aegir v1 as a secondary driver for the SR1a. 

The environment is always the first thing to fix, better yet design, correctly and then use room treatments.

Then it comes to placement of all the gear and furnishings, speaker placement most critical.

Why is this the order? I would have supposed that speaker placement comes first because otherwise, how would one know where the first reflection point (and others) are? 

I thought the way to do it was to put speakers first. Happy to be corrected.